A piece of stone with red lines on it has been found in South Africa. Research indicates that these intersecting lines are intentional. This makes this 73 thousand year old drawing the oldest made by modern human hands.
‘The oldest drawing ever found.’ This claim is regularly in the news and not unjustified. Modern research methods make it possible to calculate more and more accurately how old pigments used or applied scratches are and whether they were applied by nature or by hands.
In this case, it is about Homo sapiens hands, which have drawn lines on a piece of stone with ocher. This mineral contains a lot of iron, which gives it a red color. The stone was found in the Blombos Cave, on the south coast of South Africa, where archaeologists have been excavating since 1991. They found various objects in which ocher plays a role and which seem to have a symbolic meaning.
Analyses
Scratched lines could be a result of using the stone, for example as a cutting board. But lines of ocher are not a by-product; they are deliberately drawn. To prove this, the researchers conducted several tests. They made pencils and paint in different shapes from ocher to see if you could get these kinds of lines on stone. The tests show that only the use of ocher in pencil form and on polished stone produces lines that are equal to the original. It also turns out that you only get the angles that can be seen on the old stone when you rotate the stone while drawing.
In addition, the scientists carried out pigment research using microscopic and chemical analyses, which showed that the red substance is indeed ocher. Luc Amkreutz, curator of prehistory at the National Museum of Antiquities and not involved in the research himself:“The chemical composition of red ocher with a lot of iron (Fe) was easily recognizable and the fact that more has already been found at that spot that the use of red ocher further confirms the image of a consciously made drawing.”
The investigation also showed that the piece of painted stone must have been part of a larger whole. Viewed under the microscope, the lines look as if they have broken off:originally they continued on stone that has now disappeared. Gerrit Dusseldorp, archaeologist specializing in Africa at the time of the discovery (Leiden University):“Now the drawing may seem to have little to do with it, but it is, in a manner of speaking, a fragment of the original.”
Artistic expressions
So the straight lines, which are a bit like our #hashtags, are on purpose, but what do they represent? Do the lines have a symbolic meaning? Is the drawing the oldest abstract art? Couldn't Homo sapiens make figurative art 73 thousand years ago, such as the handprints or drawings of animals he started making in caves 40 thousand years ago? The research does not provide us with answers to these questions.
Amkreutz:“It is difficult to interpret such abstract forms if we do not even know what the figurative cave drawings were for. It is clear that abstract forms in the form of engravings have been part of the spectrum of our 'artistic' expressions for 540,000 years and were therefore also popular with our ancestors:Homo erectus already scratched lines on a freshwater mussel 540,000 years ago). Creating hashtags, lines, dots and zigzags is something we love to do.”
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Symbolism
What is certain is that the people living near the South African Bombos Cave were way ahead of their time. They used red ocher as a paint between 100 thousand and 73 thousand years ago, started making artifacts from stone and bone, and beads from small sea snail shells. According to Dusseldorp, symbolism is the most plausible explanation for behavior that has been repeated for thousands of years.
“Of course, this is not at all strange for a population that is anatomically and genetically indistinguishable from ourselves. In Africa, it has been about modern people like us since 300 thousand years ago. If they were alive today, they would be able to learn to read, write, operate iPhones, and drive without difficulty. However long ago 73,000 years may seem, on an evolutionary time scale it is virtually nothing," says Dusseldorp.
Homo sapiens drawing no example for Neanderthals
Homo sapiens did not start drawing in other areas until tens of thousands of years later:the well-known drawings in the French Chauvet Cave are 31 thousand years old. Hopefully in the future we will get an answer to the question whether African Homo sapiens took his drawing skills with him to Europe and Asia, where they grew into figurative art or whether they developed independently there. In any case, there seems to be no question of mutual influence with Neanderthals.
Before the discovery of the African stone from the study, the oldest drawing was a cave drawing by Neanderthals in Spain, dating back 64 thousand years. Amkreutz:“Although there has been mixing between modern humans and Neanderthals in the Near East, Spain seems too isolated to me to have formed a zone of interaction with co-living modern humans. So I think that if the dates are correct, you should assume that the cave drawing in Spain was made by Neanderthals, outside the influence of modern humans. We tend to overestimate ourselves as a species.”
Dusseldorp:“The recently discovered hashtag in Gibraltar was probably also applied by Neanderthals. We archaeologists for a long time explained the finds of these kinds of drawings away from Neanderthals, because they did not fit the image of dumbo left behind. However, they were very, very smart. In addition, most of the images created by Homo sapiens in French caves over 30,000 years ago are also lines and zigzags. Only the more appealing drawings of animals are more often selected for the coffee table books.”